Debunking TERF Essentialism: Part III of the ‘Sexing the Body is Gender’ Series

Part III of the ‘Sexing the Body is Gender’ Series: Debunking TERF Essentialism Listen to this article In Part II, what gender is and is not was discussed and the ways in which we contextualize our bodies were reviewed. In this section, essentialism arguments regularly asserted as being self-evidently true are reviewed and deconstructed. When appealing to a substance – say, genetics, chromosomes, etc. – as being a sexed essence which defines how we collectively regard the body as a whole and how that individual must also regard their own body, we are in fact appealing to an essence to elicit normative identification behavior on an individual and societal level. The ideology of sexual difference functions as censorship in our culture by masking, on the ground of nature, the social opposition between men and women. Masculine/feminine, male/female are the categories which serve to conceal the fact that social differences always

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